Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Why the Marine Hymn Contains the Verse "To the Shores of Tripoli"
Most Americans are unaware of the fact that over two hundred years
ago the United States had declared war on Islam and Thomas Jefferson led
the charge!
At the height of the eighteenth century, Muslim
pirates were the terror of the Mediterranean and a large area of the
North Atlantic.
They attacked every ship in sight, and held the
crews for exorbitant ransoms. Those taken hostage were subjected to
barbaric treatment and wrote heart-breaking letters home, begging their
government and family members to pay whatever their Mohammedan captors
demanded.
These extortionists of the high seas represented the
Islamic nations of Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers – collectively
referred to as the Barbary Coast – and presented a dangerous and
unprovoked threat to the new American Republic.
Before the
Revolutionary War, U.S. merchant ships had been under the protection of
Great Britain. When the U.S. declared its independence and entered
into war, the ships of the United States were protected by France.
However, once the war was won, America had to protect its own fleets.
Thus, the birth of the U.S. Navy. Beginning in1784, seventeen years
before he would become president, Thomas Jefferson became America’s
Minister to France. That same year, the U.S. Congress sought to
appease its Muslim adversaries by following in the footsteps of European
nations who paid bribes to the Barbary States rather than engaging them
in war.
In July of 1785, Algerian pirates captured American
ships, and the Dye of Algiers demanded an unheard-of ransom of $60,000.
It was a plain and simple case of extortion, and Thomas Jefferson was
vehemently opposed to any further payments. Instead, he proposed to
Congress the formation of a coalition of allied nations who together
could force the Islamic states into peace. A disinterested Congress
decided to pay the ransom.
In 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John
Adams met with Tripoli’s ambassador to Great Britain to ask by what
right his nation attacked American ships and enslaved American citizens,
and why Muslims held so much hostility towards America, a nation with
which they had no previous contacts.
The two future presidents
reported that Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja had answered that
Islam "was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in
their Quran that all nations who would not have acknowledged their
authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war
upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they
could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be
slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise."
Despite this
stunning admission of premeditated violence on non-Muslim nations, as
well as the objections of many notable American leaders, including
George Washington, who warned that caving in was both wrong and would
only further embolden the enemy, for the following fifteen years the
American government paid the Muslims millions of dollars for the safe
passage of American ships or the return of American hostages. The
payments in ransom and tribute amounted to over twenty percent of the
United States government annual revenues in 1800.
Jefferson was
disgusted. Shortly after his being sworn in as the third President of
the United States in 1801, the Pasha of Tripoli sent him a note
demanding the immediate payment of $225,000 plus $25,000 a year for
every year forthcoming. That changed everything.
Jefferson let
the Pasha know, in no uncertain terms, what he could do with his demand.
The Pasha responded by cutting down the flagpole at the American
consulate and declared war on the United States. Tunis, Morocco, and
Algiers immediately followed suit. Jefferson, until now, had been
against America raising a naval force for anything beyond coastal
defense, but, having watched his nation be cowed by Islamic thugery for
long enough, decided that is was finally time to meet force with force.
He dispatched a squadron of frigates to the Mediterranean and taught
the Muslim nations of the Barbary Coast a lesson he hoped they would
never forget. Congress authorized Jefferson to empower U.S. ships to
seize all vessels and goods of the Pasha of Tripoli and to “cause to be
done all other acts of precaution or hostility as the state of war
would justify”.
When Algiers and Tunis, who were both accustomed to American
cowardice and acquiescence, saw the newly independent United States had
both the will and the right to strike back, they quickly abandoned their
allegiance to Tripoli. The war with Tripoli lasted for four more
years, and raged up again in 1815. The bravery of the U.S. Marine
Corps in these wars led to the line “to the shores of Tripoli” in the
Marine Hymn, and they would forever be known as “leathernecks” for the
leather collars of their uniforms, designed to prevent their heads from
being cut off by the Muslim scimitars when boarding enemy ships.
Islam, and what its Barbary followers justified doing in the name of
their prophet and their god, disturbed Jefferson quite deeply.
America had a tradition of religious tolerance, the fact that Jefferson,
himself, had co-authored the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom,
but fundamentalist Islam was like no other religion the world had ever
seen. A religion based on supremacism, whose holy book not only
condoned but mandated violence against unbelievers, was unacceptable to
him. His greatest fear was that someday this brand of Islam would
return and pose an even greater threat to the United States.
This should bother every American. That Muslims have brought about
women-only classes and swimming times at taxpayer-funded universities
and public pools; that Christians, Jews, and Hindus have been banned
from serving on juries where Muslim defendants are being judged; Piggy
banks and Porky Pig tissue dispensers have been banned from workplaces
because they offend Islamist sensibilities; ice cream has been
discontinued at certain Burger King locations because the picture on the
wrapper looks similar to the Arabic script for Allah; public schools
are pulling pork from their menus; on and on and on and on….
It’s death by a thousand cuts, or inch-by-inch as some refer to it, and
most Americans have no idea that this battle is being waged every day
across America. By not fighting back, by allowing groups to obfuscate
what is really happening, and not insisting that the Islamists adapt to
our own culture, the United States is cutting its own throat with a
politically correct knife, and helping to further the Islamists agenda.
Sadly, it appears that today’s America's leaders would rather be
politically correct than victorious!
Any doubts, just "Google Thomas Jefferson vs. the Muslim World."